The Unlikely Airbnb Hosts of Japan | Hacker News Reader

The Unlikely Airbnb Hosts of Japan

nytimes.com

79 pointsdamian200029 comments

To anyone going to Japan who is reluctant to use AirBnB but still does not want to stay in an "ordinary" hotel, I can recommend going to a Ryokan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryokan_%28inn%29

Ryokans are Japenese guest houses and can be found in many cities around the country. I once stayed in one close to the Hongo campus of the University and had a fantastic experience. Sleeping in a traditional Japenese room and waking up to a traditional Japanese breakfast before going to the bathhouse or having a walk in the garden is just awesome, even more so because you can do this while being in the center of a city with 11 million inhabitants :D

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g1066442-d320548-Rev...

Hostels are also pretty great in Japan.

Marvelous piece of writing.

I've been to Tokyo in past December and was renting an apartment in Shibuya via Aribnb. While searching for a good place to stay I noticed that a lot were listed either by foreigners living in Japan or by people who have close ties with the west (work with western companies or travel a lot).

I've also met new friend from the US there (via reddit) and unlike me, he did stay with the Japanese family in a guest room. But it seems like they too were more open in the matter of sharing living space because they also had another guest staying with them and she was from Australia (can't remember now, but I think she's a relative of said family - so that too could be attributed to closer ties with the "west").

I had the same experience last year in July - we stayed in a 5 bedroom apartment in Nakano, Tokyo which was run by a Phillipino lady who was a Japanese citizen. She spoke good English along with Mandarin Chinese. She caters for a niche market of large families - the 5 bedrooms can hold 10 people comfortably - each has a bed. It was a great neighbourhood - very close to the Shin-Nakano station on the Marunouchi line.

"Like a lot of Airbnb listings, it was rented as “entire place” rather than “private room,” which meant no host was in residence. But in this case, I’m not sure any host was ever in residence. The listing was run by some sort of conglomerate or management company, and checking in involved no human interaction whatsoever. To get there, I carried my luggage up a neon-lit hill — past something called Hotel Fifteen Love, past places called Pub Slow Jam, Adult Shop Joyful and Baby Doll and a pet store that sold fluffed-up puppies and kittens and still somehow managed to look seedy — to the concrete apartment building where it was located. The door was unlocked. A key had been left inside. I had no idea where I’d landed."

That's wild, is there really such a low expectation of crime over there?

Anecdote: I once left an iPad on top of a table at a McDonalds in the 3rd busiest train station in Japan during rush hour. Realized my mistake and came back 30 minutes later. Neither iPad nor table taken.

Sentiment among Japanese folks is that it isn't as good as the old days but objectively speaking if a major US city reported Tokyo's victimization rates they'd be laughed out of the room. "At least lie competently!"

Can you offer any insight based on your experiences in Japan as to why the crime rate is so low?

One can only speculate, but here are some possible factors :

1) Firearms are not widely available, and must be registered. Violent crime usually involves knives rather than firearms.

2) Japan has little in the way of slums or ghettos. Low-income communities are not as prone to problems with crime.

3) Low availability of drugs. With less reliance on drugs, drug trafficking and associated crimes are less prevalent.

4) Homogenous society. There is little in the way of ethnic tension, with only a few notable minorities.

5) Gang culture. Organized criminal groups like the yakuza are more business oriented than violence oriented. They are more likely to go after the crimes that provide more money, including white collar crimes and crimes like extortion. They also prefer to lay low, avoiding violent activity which would draw the attention of the police and politicians.

6) Police culture. The police only move forward with an investigation if there is enough to go on, leading to a high conviction rate.

7) Low unemployment. Most people who want work have it. Otherwise there are usually enough welfare programs to keep others content and out of trouble.

Kamagasaki has been a place name since 1922. An accurate count of occupants has never been produced, even in the national census, due to the large population of day laborers who lack permanent addresses. It has the largest day laborer concentration in the country. 30,000 people are estimated to live in every 2,000 meter radius in this area, part of which has been in slum-like conditions until as recently as 2012, containing run-down housing structures and untidy streets.

The area surrounding Kamagasaki is upscale, clean and attracts tourists with popular sightseeing spots including the Tsutenkaku, Shinsekai, and Nipponbashi. However, in Kamagasaki, homeless people can often be seen sleeping in the streets throughout the day.

Many Bōryokudan offices are located in Kamagasaki, and drug and weapons trafficking is thought to occur daily. Illegal gambling stores are often in business in broad daylight. A seemingly endless line of illegally parked cars extends along the national highway just across from the Nishinari police station. The police do not bother issuing tickets knowing that the fines will never be paid.

The city government of Osaka does not allow the name "Kamagasaki" to appear on official maps and discourages the use of the name in the media. A film set in the neighborhood by director Shingo Ota which was partially financed by the city, called "Fragile", was pulled from the 2013-2014 Osaka Asian Film Festival after Ota refused to cut scenes from the film that identified the location of the community and referenced certain aspects of its culture.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamagasaki

Um... what is the comment referring to?

He's pointing out that official statistics on crime in Japan may not accurately reflect reality.

And how it sounds like Japan does have slums

> Low availability of drugs.

You been to Roppongi recently? Drugs are being pushed everywhere by specific demographics (non Japanese working for the Yakuza).

> Police culture. The police only move forward with an investigation if there is enough to go on, leading to a high conviction rate.

Do you have a reference ? I suspect that's an incorrect statement. They have a high conviction rate due to putting people under duress. [1][2][3][4][5]

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20810572

[2] http://californiainnocenceproject.org/2013/01/japan-concerne...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/world/asia/11japan.html?pa...

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/world/asia/07iht-japan.1.5...

[5] http://www.imadr.org/sayama/justice.html

Roppongi may have a significant drug trafficking problem, and you can probably find other such areas with similar problems (Shinjuku or Shibuya, perhaps?) but I think that for the most part these areas are the exception rather than the rule. There are many parts of Japan without the same drug problems.

I should have said, "prosecutors move forward with a case" rather than, "police move forward with an investigation." The idea is that Japan has a lower prosecution rate than the US, due to a limited number of prosecutors and limited resources. I suspect that the difference in conviction rate arises from a variety of factors, including both lower prosecution rate and coercion.

[0] http://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/RePEc/iuk/wpaper/bepp2008-16-r...

Thanks for the link, interesting read. Can't help but think back to reading forum posts of numerous gaijins being locked up for 3 weeks kept under duress in order to secure a confession. [0]

[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/1t09ud/did_time_in_a_...

A friend of mine told of his experience visiting a small town in Japan. Upon arriving at the train station he asked if there were lockers where he could leave his luggage for the day. "Just set the bag in the floor over there," said the train official, laughing at the ridiculous question. Sure enough, when my friend returned 10 hours later, no one had touched his luggage.

Not just a small town thing. I was really surprised to see plain (unlocked, unguarded) cabinets for storing tourist backpacks at the Tsukiji fish market. This is an extremely busy place in Tokyo, yet it is common to leave your backpack there, unattended.

It doesn't seem to be abnormal.

I visited Tokyo last year and booked a few days' stay on one of these converted apartment-building hotels. I assumed it would be staffed all the time like a hotel in the US, and was pretty surprised when I showed up Saturday evening to find that there was nobody behind the front desk. What I found instead was a little envelope with my name on it, containing a room key and a polite note asking me to check in first thing Monday morning. It was a little surreal.

That's actually quite common in Europe as well, especially in family hotels that can't afford to be staffed 24 hours a day. Also, the risk of someone going in there, taking the card and burglarizing the hotel room are pretty low I'd imagine.

Yes, in Japan people have great (and justified) faith in the general public, from what I have heard. If you leave something lying around, it probably won't be stolen.

If you are into meeting people while travelling, I highly recommend you Servas[0]. It is a more than 70 year old peace association with chapters in every country. You can be traveller or host. I travelled all over the world with Servas, from Norway to Japan and we are now a "host family". Happily getting visitors from everywhere.

[0]: http://servas.org/

So it is like couchsurfing?

This article was fascinating to me. They found unified characteristics amongst power users, but because of how Japan works, it may be far more difficult to find potential hosts like the ones they have using anything other than word of mouth or traditional advertising.

What a cool problem to solve.

Does anyone know if retirees are major Airbnb hosts elsewhere in the world, particularly retired widows?

Tip for NYT tech: try the page on rotated monitors. The notes and the picture don't match — people are cut off left and right.

The page even starts to break when you reduce the browser window size. Very annoying. Otherwise, NYT is wonderful.

When browsing couchsurfing and AirBnB it seems to me it's mostly foreigners or companies renting/lending.

De-paywalled: https://archive.today/UFtBa

I can't decide if this would have been better or worse if they'd chosen someone to write it who knew more about Japan, but it was interesting. Japanese people have done homestays for some time, though, which is arguably a similar phenomenon, except you're stuck with a foreigner for way longer. That might be something to think about.

I stayed at an amazing airbnb in Nara. I would recommend airbnb for smaller cities in Japan.

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